This article profiles the Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases (70-462) exam for database professionals who perform installation, maintenance, and configuration tasks. Pearson IT Certification provides a variety of exam preparation tools to help our customers in their quest for certification, including the Exam Profile series. Each profile is developed based on the testing experience of one of our trainers or authors. You won’t get exact questions or answers, but you will get a real feel for the exam. Each profile describes question forms, trouble spots, hints for exam preparation, and recommendations for additional study resources. Find out what you can expect to see on the exam and how you can better prepare for it.

The 70-462 exam is meant to be taken by Database Professionals who perform installation, maintenance and configuration tasks as their primary areas of responsibility. They will often set up database systems and are responsible for making sure those systems operate efficiently. They also make sure that the data they store is backed up regularly, stored effectively, and that the data is secure from unauthorized access. Microsoft states that the exam is meant to be taken by those whose primary responsibilities may include:

Audit SQL Server instances.

Back up databases.

Configure additional SQL Server components.

Configure SQL Server instances.

Configure SQL Server services.

Deploy SQL Server.

Implement a migration strategy.

Implement columnstore indexes.

Implement contained databases.

Implement HADR (High-Availability and Disaster Recovery solution).

Import and export data.

Install SQL Server and related services.

Maintain a database.

Maintain indexes.

Manage and configure databases.

Manage data partitions.

Manage database permissions.

Manage database snapshots.

Manage logins and server roles.

Manage SQL Server Agent alerts.

Manage SQL Server Agent jobs.

Manage SQL Server Agent operators.

Manage SQL Server instances

Manage users and database roles.

Manage, create, and design log files.

Optimize queries.

Plan installation.

Restore databases.

Troubleshoot security.

After passing the Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases (70-462) exam, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s):

MCSA: SQL Server 2012

MCSE: Data Platform

MCSE: Business Intelligence

Exam Details

Number of Questions: Approximately 45-55 questions (Since Microsoft does not publish this information, the number of exam questions may change without notice.)

Type of Questions: This test format is multiple choice and multiple choice multiple answer. You may also see several scenario questions.

Passing Score: 700

This passing score does not mean that you must answer 70 percent of the items correctly in order to pass the exam. The actual percentage varies from exam to exam and may be more or less than 70 percent. There is no penalty for guessing. No points are deducted for incorrect answers. If a question specifies that you must choose multiple correct answers, you must choose the exact number of correct answers specified in the question in order to earn a point for that item. Some of the questions on the exam may not count toward the calculation of your score. Microsoft will often throw a question in that is meant to gather data that will help them improve the exam.

Time Limit: 120 minutes

Trouble Spots

As with any exam, it will vary from person to person as to what is deemed to be difficult. Be sure you are familiar with each of the topics in the exam objectives listed below.

Microsoft advises that customers utilize virtualization technologies to help ensure that they are licensing only the compute power that they need to run SQL Server 2012. If you do not need all of the computing power on a server, Microsoft will allow the customer to license software at the individual VM level. By doing this, you can carve out a portion of computing power on a large server and then license just the number of virtual cores that it has created within that virtual operating system environment.

For local installations, you must run Setup as an administrator. If you install SQL Server from a remote share, you must use a domain account that has read and execute permissions on the remote share.

Typical stand-alone instances of SQL Server 2012, whether default or named instances, do not use a non-default value for the Instance ID.

Following a SharePoint upgrade, your reporting services environment will be in a non-working state until SQL Server is upgraded.

A full backup will back up your users but not your logins. In order to back up your logins, you must to back up the Master database. To restore your database to a different server, you must synchronize your logins by using the sp_change_users_login command. A differential backup backs up only the data that has changed since the last full backup. A transaction-log backup will back up all transactions that occur in the database and will purge or clean up the log after the backup completes. Using a transaction-log backup gives you point-in-time recovery for a database. An incremental style repository aims to make it more feasible to store backups from more points in time by organizing the data into increments of change between points in time.